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Watch out, quangocrats  our patience is running out

Beware the fury of a patient man, as the poet said. The British are patient, surprisingly so. We are slow to fury, and slow to public demonstrations of rage, unlike the French, who are quick to man and woman the barricades, as we saw last week in the mass demonstrations all across France. But we too are capable in the end of fury, as we also saw here last week, and when British patience is finally thoroughly exhausted, and when British fury is really aroused, I suspect we will see widespread public unrest.

The author of those famous words about the fury of the patient was John Dryden, writing only 30 years after the end of the English civil war; he saw the beginning of it as a young boy of 11. Dryden's warning that rage which has overcome years of patient repression will then burst out with particular fury